Jae Wook Yang, Pharm.D., Ph.D., BCPS, is a full professor of pharmacy practice who teaches pharmacotherapy and medicinal chemistry at the Sahmyook University College of Pharmacy and internal medicine at the Sahmyook Medical Center in Seoul, Republic of Korea. He holds a joint appointment as the director of the Research Institute of Clinical Education and Practice at Sahmyook University. Before assuming his current position, Yang was an assistant professor at the University of Kansas and an associate professor and assessment committee chair at West Coast University.

Yang has an enriched academic background. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Sahmyook University, earned his Ph.D. degree in medicinal chemistry at Seoul National University, and completed his postdoctoral program at Stanford University in Stanford, California. He then received his Pharm.D. degree at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California (2006), and completed a 3-year fellowship in renal transplantation and clinical pharmacogenetics at the National Institute of Transplantation and St. Vincent Medical Center, Los Angeles, California.

Yang holds leadership positions in various organizations. He is the vice president of the Korean College of Clinical Pharmacy, the vice president of the Korean Association of Pharmacy Health Communications, and the chair of a subcommittee on medical and pharmacogenetics of the Genetics Society of Korea. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Korean Pharmaceutical Information Center. Moreover, Yang is actively engaged in the international relationship between Korean and U.S. pharmacy schools. In July 2018, he served as a liaison and chaperone who recruited 16 Korean pharmacy students nationwide to attend a 2-week international summer program at Western University. He is also an APPE preceptor for the Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy in southern California.

Yang recalls that when he studied pharmacy in Korea, he learned much about chemistry and biology, but not pharmacotherapy, given that most of his courses focused on new drug development or drug manufacturing at pharmaceutical companies. Yet most graduates of Korean pharmacy schools eventually land jobs at community pharmacies or hospitals, where clinical knowledge is required to work as pharmacists. Recognizing the importance of balancing pharmaceutical and clinical education in Korean pharmacy education, Yang decided to come to the United States to be trained as a clinical pharmacist and to shape the future of Korean pharmacy education. In his early 40s when he pursued his Pharm.D. degree at Western University, Yang gained encouragement from university faculty members and many fellow clinical pharmacists who worked with him during his study. He later became a faculty member at two U.S. pharmacy schools before returning to his home country, where he now contributes to the development and innovation of clinical education in Korean pharmacy schools.

Yang states that he owes much of his successful career as a clinical faculty member and clinical pharmacist to the support of ACCP, which helped him identify suitable academic career opportunities and prepare for the BCPS examination. Yang has been a full member of ACCP and an active member of the Immunology/Transplantation PRN since 2005. He has presented 25 research posters at ACCP national meetings and was a top 5 finalist in the Best Resident/Fellow Poster competition at the 2007 and 2009 ACCP Annual Meetings. Yang has contributed to the College by serving as a reviewer for student travel awards, resident/fellow travel awards, and the ACCP Virtual Poster Symposium; a CV reviewer for pharmacy students and trainees; a manuscript reviewer for Pharmacotherapy; an item writer for the ACCP pharmacotherapy mock exam; and a chapter reviewer for the ACCP Critical Care Pharmacy Preparatory Review Course in 2015.

While practicing as a clinical pharmacist in a hospital, Yang realized that although computers can store clinical information and communicate with other health professionals within a hospital, they are rarely used to make clinical decisions. Looking to the future, he believes that if computers can further assist clinical pharmacists with reviewing patient medication profiles, identifying prescription errors, and optimizing pharmacotherapy, the job accuracy and efficiency of clinical pharmacists will be enhanced, ultimately benefiting more patients. In addition, he believes that many existing technologies – for instance, QR codes for storing prescription information – have yet to be applied to clinical pharmacy practice. Yang perceives that clinical pharmacists with knowledge of information technology (IT), particularly artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT), will have more advantages to work in a hospital setting in the future. Along these lines, Yang hopes to develop an IT course for pharmacy students as well as a research area (“digital pharmacy”) that integrates IT with clinical pharmacy.